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GRU is not as well known as KGB or FSB. But the Russian military intelligence services are attracting more and more attention when allegations of sneaky and deadly operations are carried out on the battlefield or outside.
The latest accusation came on Wednesday, when Britain identified two suspects in this year's nerve agent poisonings as agents of the GRU.
An overview of the GRU:
L & # 39; AGENCY
Officially named General Directorate of the Armed Forces General Staff, the agency is almost universally designated by its former GRU acronym.
This is the darkest Russian secret service. When his former director, Igor Sergun, died in 2016, the Kremlin's announcement was so blurry that she gave neither the date, nor the cause, nor the place of death.
The agency has an apparently broad mandate. According to the website of the Ministry of Defense, it is his responsibility not only "to ensure the conditions conducive to the successful implementation of the defense and security policy of the Russian Federation but scientific, technical and environmental areas."
allegations
Britain claims that two GRU agents led the spring attack with Novichok, the neurologist, against Sergei Skripal, a former GRU officer who became a British agent and his daughter. Both survived the poisoning in the town of Salisbury, but three months later, two local residents were affected by the same nerve agent, one of them deadly.
This week's claim came less than two months after the United States indicted 12 suspected GRU agents for hacking the Hillary Clinton and Democratic Party presidential campaign and freeing tens of thousands of private communications. American election.
Also in July 2014, the Bellingcat investigative group reported that a GRU officer was in charge of operations in eastern Ukraine, where Russian-backed separatists were fighting Ukrainian forces. International investigators claim that the plane was shot down by a mobile missile launcher imported from Russia. The GRU officer appointed by Bellingcat would have been responsible for the transfers of arms.
The RBC Russian News Service reported this year that the GRU is overseeing Russian mercenaries in Syria, fighting there as an army shadow.
The Russian authorities generally refuse the allegations against the GRU and refuse to discuss its activities. They said that they had not recognized the suspects named Wednesday by Britain in poisoning at Salisbury.
OTHER AGENCIES
The GRU is one of Russia's security and intelligence apparatus, which also includes the Foreign Intelligence Service, known as SVR, and the Federal Security Service, or FSB, in charge of internal intelligence and counter-intelligence. -spying. SVR and FSB were separated from the KGB after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Former KGB agent Vladimir Putin led the FSB before taking over the presidency.
And as president, Putin appoints senior officials of the GRU. Of all the agencies, the FSB occupies a prominent place in the minds of Russians, because it hunts internal threats. The GRU, created by Soviet founder Vladimir Lenin, has a more ruthless reputation, but focuses its energy on foreign threats.
Agency operations appear to be both competitive and cooperative.
Pavel Felgenhauer, an independent military analyst based in Moscow, told the Associated Press that "if the SVR clashes with military intelligence, it must share it with the GRU, which means it brings back anything military. even if they know it. Conversely, military forces or the GRU are urged never to report anything political. "
But in the case of the alleged hacking of US elections, he said: "I think it was an inter-service operation, because it's not military but they got some kind of hacking and they l & # 39; 39, shared with FSB and SVR. "
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Kate de Pury contributed to this report.
